Building AI brains for blue-collar jobs
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AI startups are raising billions of dollars to develop "brains" for robots that could work everywhere from oil rigs to construction sites.
Why it matters: Blue-collar workers may have as much to fear from AI job disruption as do white-collar workers.
The big picture: The basic idea is that these software "brains" would understand physics and other real-world conditions — helping the robots adapt to changing environments.
- Some of these AI-powered robots may be humanoids, others may not — form is less important than functionality.
- If a robot has the physical capability to do a task, it could have the flexible knowledge. Plumbing, electrical, welding, roofing, fixing cars, making meals — there really isn't much of a limit. Think about it a bit like C-3PO and R2-D2, but without the snarky personalities.
Zoom in: There isn't yet agreement on the smartest way to apply AI to robotics.
- Big Tech giants and startups are gathering gobs of real-world data to train their AI models.
- Others are employing "world models," which are trained on simulated physical world data. They're cheaper — relying on an understanding of things like gravity — and have been championed by Yann LeCun, the former chief AI scientist at Meta who recently formed a new company called AMI Labs.
Follow the money: Toronto-based Waabi last week raised up to $1 billion in what could be the largest funding ever for a Canadian startup, with an initial focus on robo-taxis and self-driving trucks.
- "It's obvious that the physical AI moment is here," Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun tells Axios' Joann Muller. "Autonomy is the first application where scale is going to happen.
- Pittsburgh-based Skild AI just raised around $1.4 billion at a $14 billion valuation. Its motto: "Any robot. Any task. One brain."
- FieldAI last month raised nearly $400 million to focus on "dirty, dull, or dangerous" industries like energy and logistics. Its software could be used by robots to help build data centers — AI enabling AI, leaving humans on the sidelines.
State of play: It's impossible to know how many blue-collar jobs could be rendered irrelevant, or over what time frame, as AI expands from the virtual to the physical.
- Even if an AI-powered robot can outperform a human, the added hardware and switching costs may outweigh the added efficiency.
- At least for now.
The bottom line: AI optimists tend to argue that there won't be net job losses, regardless of the collar color, because new technologies create new labor needs.
- AI critics caution that the past isn't always predicate, given that AI represents a more extreme change than we've ever before experienced.
